Victoria WilsonReseñas

What a slog!

This book written by a major editor needs editing! Some transitions are rough, there is often too much information and detail, facts get repeated, typos, etc. At close to 1000 pages with the index, bibliography, etc. this book is a huge time commitment and as much as the author did a tremendous amount of research and made a serious effort to provide a lot of background, it was a tough slog through the entire thing. The book doesn't cohere well and the ending is abrupt.

This book will be the definite Stanwyck biography but I wish a better writer wrote it. Many biographies have horrible writing: in no way could one say that's an issue here. Wilson's writing is fine but it's just not a pleasure to read.

Finally! Ugh, what a slog. I really, really wanted to like this book, since I love Barbara Stanwyck. But good lord, this book needs an editor. Or another editor. Or ten editors. It reads as though the author, literally, dug up every piece of minutiae ever published about Babs, her family, and anyone who ever associated with her peripherally or tertiarilly (fake word!) and then narrated it chronologically. Seriously, we don't need to know about movies she never made. We don't need the bio of a playwright who wrote one not-very-famous movie she did. We don't need every soundbite ever fabricated on her behalf in fan magazines. Throughout the deluge of unnecessary info, the book also veers between topics, with sections and even sentences barely related to each other at times. It really reminds me of essays I'd write in school where I was systematically going through sources, stripping out any useful stuff, and sticking it into paragraphs without much concern for how the entire thing flows. This is where that editor would come in.

It's too bad, since she deserves a book that doesn't make reader(s) want to throw it across the room. 860 pages, and she's barely 30 years old! If I start reading part two, whenever it arrives, please, somebody stop me!

I'd have to agree with the previous reviews - a lot of information, but that seems to be it. It's more of an encyclopedia than a life story - it's just a series of facts or publicity quotes, in some cases.
What was a real treasure are the background stories of everyone Barbara meets or works with. We get a lot of how some of the famous, even legendary Hollywood personalities got their start and where they were career-wise and personal life wise up to the time they intersect with Barbara.
Not sure if I'll pick-up the next volume.½

I received A Life of Barbara Stanwyck as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

This first volume tells the tale of the first 33 years of Stanwyck's life. At nearly 900 pages, Wilson's research is broad and deep, and very impressive. The book begins with a brief family history, then moves into an account of her childhood--essentially an orphan, she was bounced between the homes of her older siblings and family friends. As a young teen, she got her start on the New York stage, gaining a reputation as a skilled stage actress before making the jump to Hollywood. In the midst of all this, the book explores her personal relationships: her first abusive marriage to stage performer Frank Fay, the adoption of their son Dion, her tumultuous divorce, and her second marriage to heartthrob Robert Taylor, not to mention her friendships and working relationships with Frank Capra, Zeppo Marx, and others.

Great research aside, I think there's something to be said for a good editor. To be honest, I'm not an expert on or aficionado of Stanwyck or Old Hollywood in general, so I came into this book as a relative novice. I think too much time was spent in long drawn-out explanations of the backstories and plots of her various films (as well as those of her two husbands, Frank Fay and Robert Taylor). At times, I felt the thread of the narrative--Stanwyck's life--kept getting lost.

Finally, the more I read, the more I just didn't like Stanwyck herself--for example, her refusal to receive a lower salary during the Great Depression--I'll grant she had a case by the letter of the law (her contract), but when behind-the-scenes laborers were getting their much smaller salaries cut dramatically, it came off as a bit diva-like and greedy to me. Also, I wasn't particularly impressed by her treatment of her son Dion. I'm guessing that the second volume will include more on their relationship, but sending a six year old to military school because he's plump doesn't give the best early impression.

While I give Wilson credit for the pure amount of information she has found, organized, and disseminated, this one just didn't grab me. Fans of Stanwyck or of this era of Hollywood cinema may very well disagree, however.

I'm terribly disappointed in this and I would like to write a long, long essay why. Some major problems: Wilson quotes "Barbara said" throughout, with lengthy excerpts. Checking the notes, these seem to be from stories in Modern Screen, etc. Those stories were largely made up by publicists and copywriters, and hardly could reflect Stanwyck's internal thoughts and motivations; Wilson must know this. In many cases, these "Barbara said" quotations are so clearly the made-up prose of a publicist that they are laughable. Yet Wilson isn't using them ironically, she takes them as gospel.
Secondly, there is a failure to connect the dots. For example: Stanwyck leaves an abusive, seven-year marriage to a raging alcoholic, and immediately becomes friends with a woman who is a heavy drinker. Since Stanwyck's father was also an alcoholic, some speculation as to a pattern of behavior (Al-Anon not yet existing) seems in order. Yet these disjointed facts are just left laying on the page. As this is a doorstop of a book, that's a lot of bits left laying around. Why?
Wilson's deliberate style is pointillist, a fact here, a fact there, and there is so much backtracking and repetition that it becomes hard to follow. Threads are drawn together poorly, or not at all. For example Stanwyck's relationship with Joan Crawford, who appears at scattered intervals, beginning when they were Ruby Stevens and Lucille LeSeur. At one point they seem strangers, then close, then strangers, then antagonists. Huh? Again, this occurs way too often to be careless, it must be deliberate, but it is infuriating. I don't understand Stanwyck's relationships with Mae Clarke or Crawford any better than I did before reading this. That's a failure.
Poor copy editing and typos mar the book. Pictures appear without captions. "He" instead of "She" in the middle of one long paragraph makes nonsense of an entire plot synopsis.
And so on. I decided not to finish, after 500+ pages, as I just don't trust this biographer. I do not understand the rave reviews. So long, with so much pointless material (what every contributor to a movie was paid in salary, for a movie Stanwyck wasn't even in), and in the end, to no point.

This is a long book - over 700 pages of prose and a couple of hundred more of filmography, index, and footnotes. And the print is small!!! You can tell I'm one of those guys that would rather have a lot of good food, rather than l smidgen of gourmet fare. I'm astounded that I'm 300 pages in and still reading. It's truly a history of early Hollywood from the time the "talkies" -talking pictures- replaced silent films.
Barbara Stanwyck grew up in Brooklyn NY and worked her way on Broadway, rising from dancer to actress, arrives in Hollywood with her husband Frank Fay. With no intention of staying, it doesn't take long for her to establish herself and star. Fay still hangs on to his career on the declining vaudeville circuit, while Barbara makes sure he has film work. She's making $5,000 a week or $50,000 a picture - big money in the depression. With Barbara's success, Fay's alcohol use affects his career and their marriage. She's hopefully in love with him and steadfastly vows to stay with him. They adopt a boy -Dion- with her hope it might save the marriage. Her attitude toward her marriage and her career is emblematic of the book's subtitle: Steel-True.